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Page 108
You cannot deceive her with a smile, nor can distance hide your
distress from her; you cannot, if you could be so minded, conceal your
joy from her, nor can you hurt her with a wound that will not heal.
Go to her with your hands swelling from the sting of the wasp you found
in the stolen fruit, or stained with crime; or your shoes wet through
with the mire of the by-ways in which you have been straying, and what
will she do? She will sit you down in front of the glowing fire of her
love, warm your straying feet, wash away the stain in the bitter waters
of her tears, and then dry them with her smile.
And you can go on straying--if you could be so minded--until seven
million seventy-times-seven, and you will find her just the same.
It is not forgiveness; it is Love.
And it was Love which, when there came no answer to her call, urged
Jill to get her camel to its knees.
Over twenty years had passed since Jill Carden, the English girl, had
first tried her 'prentice hand upon the obstreperous camel. She had
ridden out into the desert under the stars with her desert lover; she
had, strong in a great love, fearlessly climbed the high wall of racial
distinction crowned with the spikes of custom and convention; she had
watched the seed of happiness burst and blossom until it had grown into
a great tree; but she had forgotten that no tree, however deep its
roots, however strong its branches, is safe, so long as Fate, in senile
jealousy, can tear the heavens into ribbons with her hellish lightning.
The camel, lurching and groaning, staggering and heaving, got to its
knees in just the same way as Taffadaln had done over twenty years ago;
just as the camel will do twenty centuries hence, if it has not become
extinct through some button, or wire, or wave, or ray which will have
turned the desert into a kind of international piazza into the middle
of which, for our post-prandial coffee and cigarette, we shall be
conveyed in a few moments by means of something wireless, for so much
cash down in advance, which will include the tip to the Bedouin waiter.
One can see empires and deserts disappearing, but the tipping
system--never!
And as Wellington would not let go of the book his mistress had left
him as guarantee of her return, so as to grip the back of the seat in
his powerful jaw, he came nigh to being strangled as he lurched and
swung and bumped as the camel got to its knees, which seemed to be
legion as it tucked its legs under and untucked them, and did it all
over again with vociferous lamentations until it had got them all
neatly folded up; and once standing four-square upon the sand, he
wrinkled his nose in disgust and removed himself some yards from the
odour of this unpleasant complaining brute which hailed undoubtedly
from the bazaar, and gave disgusting and crude imitations in its throat
of water being poured out of a small-necked bottle.
He wanted his mistress, and her only, so, having no use for or interest
in this woman who had brought him, for no apparent reason, upon such an
uncomfortable journey, he simply took matters into his own big head and
without a with or by your leave waddled off, book in slobbering mouth,
to look for his beloved, whom--his olfactory powers not being of the
keenest--he felt to be somewhere in the neighbourhood, perhaps playing
at hide-and-seek behind the tents, as she did on wet mornings at home
behind the Chesterfield.
Jill dismounted and stood facing the desert, which seemed to stretch as
one vast purple pall; and as she stood she wrestled with a mighty fear
which held her so that she could not turn and go towards the tent
through which shone the orange light.
She did not say to herself that her son had gone out with his horses
and his dogs; she did not try to trick herself with the thought that
perhaps he slept in his purple tent, and for that reason had not rushed
out hot-foot across the desert to meet and lift her from the camel.
She knew that she had only to turn and walk the few yards to the tent
to have all her questions answered, but she also knew that all she
wanted to do was to stand on and on and on, just as she was, with her
face towards the night, and her back to the dawn of another day, and
definite knowledge.
She loved her other sons deeply and dearly; she loved her little
daughter; but her first-born held equal place in her heart with the
Arab his father, and her love for him was beyond words and almost too
great and too holy a thing to be written about here.
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